18 sidering Vermeer’s relative obscurity at the time and the falsified appearance of the Girl Reading a Letter. The brief description of the painting makes no mention of a picture of Cupid on the wall – which is an indication that the overpainting of such a large part of the background may have been executed before the work arrived in the painting collection of Augustus III.12 In accordance with the high esteem in which it was held, the painting was initially placed in the private Bilderkabinett of the Elector of Saxony in the Dresden palace .13 After the dissolution of these private chambers in 1816, the painting was transferred to the Royal Picture Gallery in the Mews (former stable building) on the Jüdenhof.14 This means that Girl Reading a Letter is one of the very few Vermeer works that were already publicly accessible in the early 19th century, when the artist had long been forgotten. From the time of the opening of the new gallery building designed by Gottfried Semper in 1855, the painting was included in the permanent exhibition15 and remained there until the outbreak of the Second World War. The Girl Reading a Letter survived the war years unscathed, being held initially at Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen and later in a secure storeroom at Königstein Fortress. From there the painting was taken to the USSR as war booty, along with nearly all the works of art of the now-defunct Staatliche Sammlungen für Kunst und Wissenschaft Dresden, and only returned to East-Germany in 1955. In June 1956 the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister reopened in the Semper Building at the Dresden Zwinger and the painting has been one of the key works on show in its permanent exhibition ever since. III The restoration of the Girl Reading a Letter, which took place from 2017 to 2021, has fundamentally changed not only the composition of the painting and the mood conveyed by its lighting and colouration, but also its appeal and its artistic message. Thanks to its excellent state of preservation, this early masterpiece by Vermeer now appears in a form that corresponds more closely to the intention of its creator than has been the case for probably three centuries. Vermeer depicted a young woman reading in front of an open window in the corner of a richly furnished room. An illusionistic green curtain covers almost a third of the picture space on the right. A broad table, lavishly decked with an oriental carpet and a Chinese porcelain bowl filled with fruit, is positioned across the picture space in such a way that the edge of the table appears along the lower edge of the painting. As a visual barrier, it impedes access to the girl’s intimate, private space. On the wall hangs a large-format picture with a broad black frame. It shows a winged boy standing upright and leaning on his bow, with his left arm raised. The decorative Cupid picture occupies most of the rear wall in the picture space. On either side of the horizon line, each half of the painting is dominated by one of the two figures. The image of the naked chubby Cupid is almost equal in size to the three- quarter figure of the girl visible behind the table. The young woman in profile has turned towards the open window to read the letter in good light, holding it with both hands. Her silhouette-like figure stands out against the whitewashed wall, while the outline of her slightly tilted head is emphasised by the dark-brown patch of ground in the bottom lefthand corner of the Cupid picture (fig. 8). Her style of dress – neat bodice in striking yellow and black, white neckerchief, her head with its gently curved forehead and neck line, her smooth, beautiful face with lowered gaze, and elaborately pinned hairstyle held in place by two narrow ribbons and set off with long ringlets – all combines to make her a graceful figure of simple elegance. Compared with the state of the painting prior to restoration, the composition has now become considerably more compact. This has the effect that the delicate figure of the girl appears fixed in place, sandwiched between the blue frame of the leaded, inward-opening window, the dark frame of the picture on the wall, the Spanish chair in the corner, and the broad table in the foreground. This almost oppressive abundance of furnishings has the effect of both holding her in place and constricting her movements. While her position directly opposite the window is precisely defined, Vermeer remained vague in his depiction of the rear-left section of the room. It is concealed by the window pane, the red curtain hanging above it, and a Spanish chair placed at an angle in the corner. Only after the restoration has it now become visible that the blue window frame slightly overlaps the broad black picture frame on the rear wall. The interplay of unusually overlapping heavy forms and accentuated edges is a recurring stylistic device found in Vermeer’s interior paintings from the time of his A Maid Asleep onwards (c. 1656/57, New
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